1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a tool of making lens, and more particularly to a cutter, which grind and cut lens in a single process.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a process of making an optical lens, the glass is molten and molded into a raw lens, and then a spherical cutting machine is applied to cut the raw lens, and a grinding machine is applied to rough grind and fine grind the lens. As shown in FIG. 8, the conventional spherical cutting machine has a reciprocating and rotary clamping device 7 and a hollow cutter 71. The clamping device 7 is clamped with a holder 72, on which lenses 9 are held. The cutter 71 has a grindstone 73 at a bottom thereof, which has grains with various roughnesses, according to the requirement of process, on a surface thereof and rests on the lenses 9. The grindstone 73 of the cutter 7 cuts the lenses 9 held on the holder 72 into spherical lenses.
After processed by the spherical cutting machine, the lenses 9, with the holder 72, are moved to a sand falling machine to rough grind the lenses 9 by a container 8, as shown in FIG. 9A. The container 8, which has a plurality of smoothing metal pellets 81, is swung to grind the lenses 9, which the holder 7 is rotated, by the smoothing metal pellets 81. The lenses 9 are grinded for the first rough grinding step. And then, the lenses 9, with the holder 7, are moved to another container 82, as shown in FIG. 9B, for the second grinding step. The container 82 has a plurality of smoothing resin pellets 83 to grind the lenses 9 having a predetermined curvature.
Because of the roughness of grindstone 73 of the cutter 71 and the pellets 81 and 83 of the containers 8 and 82 are constant, the lenses cannot be cut and grinded in a single machine, so that the lenses have to be moved between two independent machines for cutting and grinding procedures respectively, and it makes the process of making the lenses complex. It gets more complex when the lenses have to be polished. As shown in FIG. 10, the lenses have to be moved to the third container for the extra grinding procedure.
It is urgent to find a solution to simplify the procedures of making the lenses and to lower the cost of fabrication.